Have you ever dreamed about how you would be remembered? How history would speak of you? I have. I’ve had tons of crazy and exciting ideas regarding the way generations down the road would perceive me in all my glory. When I first became a Christian, in my silly zeal I wanted to be a missionary somewhere dangerous with the hope of being martyred!
But we hear it all the time don’t we? ‘What’s going to be the legacy you leave behind?’ ‘How will you make an impact on the world?’ ‘Will your decedents be proud of who you were?’ But more awkward, if you are a Christian: ‘What will history say of your work for the cause of Christ?’ ‘How many people will greet you in Heaven who, if it were not for you, would not be there’ ‘How many people will you have discipled?’ ‘Will you have an -ism attached to your last name because of your scholastic or dynamic ministry?’
Oh the burden of building such a great legacy! You need to get workin on that yesterday! You need to do so many great things and impact so many important people who will then go on to influence a certain nation who has never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ before!
Unfortunately we have traded an act of love in for a a ragged, selfish and melting dream of meaning something in the world, of being someone, being known; we have tainted good charity for me-zeal.
As one pastor pointed out, ‘What was your great, great, great grandmothers name?’ You know what, if it wasn’t for ancestry.com you’d be unknown to your own great, great, great grandchildren, but even then they will, more than likely, not know you–who you are, what you were like, how you smiled, what made you tick.
It is hard to find people in the Bible who care about their legacy like we are so often told to do. And the guys and gals we do find in the Bible who are concerned about such things end up on the opposite side of God’s favor because they were worried about how they would be remembered, not how they loved their Maker and their fellow human beings.
Remember in the book of Esther, the idiot Haman was trying to promote himself and wanted all his friends and family and nation to worship him . . . but he ended up being hung on his own gallows. Remember Peter how he stuck his neck out when he said, ‘Lord, I’ll not forsake you’–he was saying, ‘look at me! I’ll be better than everyone else!’–but he too ran away when the possibility of persecution came. Or the king in Daniel who lost his marbles and lived like an animal so God would make him see that he was nothing. Or most pointedly the author of Ecclesiastes who taught that all things in this world, no matter how great you made them or influenced them, will be passed on to someone else who didn’t do a thing to deserve it.
You see, Christians are those who already know who they are. We are a people who do not have to prove ourselves. We are humbled beyond understanding simply because we are God’s children. We have no need of impressing others. We have no need of making sure we have left indelible impressions on hundreds by our speeches and acts. No, we Christians are more concerned about Jesus than ourselves; we are happy being described by the word mere. If someone wrote a book about most of the incredible followers of Jesus, we might be bored to tears because God looks at the heart not at all the sparkling achievements we're so use to applauding.
To understand that to be enveloped in Christ is what is most important is to understand everything with regard to this legacy making mess. You will be forgotten by the world and your family, it is the law of life. But you will never be forgotten by your Father. The mystery is that His legacy is yours.
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